


Never Before or Since

by Celandine



Series: Dakin/Irwin [2]
Category: History Boys (2006)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-10
Updated: 2015-07-10
Packaged: 2018-04-08 15:46:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4311087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Celandine/pseuds/Celandine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Irwin muses on truth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Before or Since

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Koshweasley](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Koshweasley/gifts).



> For Koshweasley, who prompted me with "Diverting Dakin's attention." The title is from the poem mentioned in the fic.

"What's truth got to do with anything?" I asked them. "In an examination, truth is not at issue."

After a while Dakin answered. "Do you really believe that, sir, or are you just trying to make us think?"

Both, really, but I didn't have a chance to say so—if I _would_ have said so, which I doubt. (Subjunctive. Hector's favourite tense, or so the boys told me.)

Because before I could say anything, Scripps had launched into Larkin's poem, "MCMXIV," helped out by the others, and all I could say then was that the poem didn't answer the question.

Poetry never answers any questions, but it did serve to distract them all, distract Dakin especially, from the fact that _I_ had not answered either.

So did I believe that truth has nothing to do with anything? _Do_ I believe that? Yes. And yet, no. I believe that truth has much less to do with anything than most of us would prefer to believe, but not that it means _nothing_.

The truth is that I was infatuated. But so was Hector, and yet what we each did in response was diametrically opposed. He pursued, as I learnt later, whereas I withdrew, and in the ironic way that such things seem to happen, my hard-won pose of indifference only made Dakin prize my attention more.

When he came to me, after he'd found out he'd gotten into Oxford, and with an exhibition—second only to Posner with his scholarship—I wanted again to divert him but I couldn't.

Couldn't find the words, couldn't find the courage perhaps. The best I could do was delay, pull out my diary and pretend that I'd planned to work on the accounts of Roche Abbey on Sunday.

Dakin brushed past that, saying he'd meet me Monday instead, telling me, "Only remember, we're not in the subjunctive any more either. It's going to happen."

But it _was_ in the subjunctive, as it turned out. I was the one who ensured that, overbalancing on Hector's bike so that I ended up in hospital and he ended up—gone.

They were all gone soon after, and so was I.

"Never such innocence again."

Perhaps Scripps was right.


End file.
